Kindred
by Missie2
Summary: Princesses are required to spend some time cohabiting with each other. Cinderella thinks it's a bit much, but maybe there are reasons for it she doesn't yet understand. Part 2: Snow White tries not to be a burden.
1. Chapter 1

**Kindred**

Author's note: I wrote this a while back for a zine but I'm not sure what happened with it afterwards, so I figured I might as well post it. I may do this as a series if the mood takes me.

Also, since I am promoting it on my other fics, I might as well mention that if you enjoy this work you may enjoy my novel on Amazon: dp/B07BGSPPBY

...

She hadn't wanted to go.

In fact, she hadn't thought she would even qualify. She wasn't a proper princess, not really. She had been given leave to marry the prince based on the fact that her family name was old and had in the past been considered noble (and despite supposedly being open to 'every eligible maiden,' the ball she had triumphed at was designed to bring only the nobility to call.)

"I couldn't possibly," she protested. "I have far too much to do here. Four months is far too long; why not a week, or two?"

Charming was kind, but he didn't understand.

"It's common for royals," he laughed softly. "I met you off the back of one of my retreats. I was there for seven months!"

Cinderella shook a little in her stays, smoothed a wrinkle in her gown, before she could answer.

"We are married," she said. "If I'm going on retreat, shouldn't I be going with you?"

"That's not how it works," he sighed. "Believe me, I'd love to, but you need to have this time away with your peers. Supposedly it makes better kings and queens of us when we take the throne."

"They're not my peers though, are they?"

"You are as much a princess as they are," he told her, sternly but lovingly. "You must remember that."

…..

For all her fears, she settled in remarkably well.

It helped to know that her situation wasn't unique. Belle was a fully fledged peasant, only allowed to marry her husband because his branch of the royal family had been exiled years before. Snow was a princess, but had worked in her own castle as a scullery maid since early childhood. Tiana's kingdom didn't seem to care that she was from a humble background and a foreigner to boot. Mulan wasn't even a princess at all, just very high up in the chain of command in her country.

She had expected to be surrounded by women like those at court, looking down their noses at a loose ribbon or a wobbly curtsy, even, god forbid, a freckle on the end of a noble nose. The reality was a collection of girls and women much like the ones she had grown up with in the towns; sweet, funny, occasionally bickering, largely carefree.

The chateau they lived in was old, sometimes draughty, but was a good home to them for their stay. Outside of their own rooms, they each made their mark on the building in their own way.

Tiana took over the kitchen for all their meals. Cinderella had offered her help, but Tiana had politely rebuffed her.

"I don't like it when someone's cooking near me," she drawled, chopping carrots and onions deftly and sweeping them into a waiting pot. "Makes me nervous. Don't know why."

Rapunzel had painted most of the rooms with bright murals. Some were huge, like the one stretching over the expanse of the library's high ceiling, all unicorns and dragons, mysterious forests and wide oceans. Others were tiny, almost invisible, like the little crop of forget-me-nots hidden behind Cinderella's bed as a sweet surprise.

Merida and Pocahontas spent most of their time in the depths of the forest or the foothills of the mountain, sometimes together, sometimes not. There was no agreement or discussion about it, they just walked off after their meals, sometimes in the same direction, and they wouldn't be seen again until near nightfall. Pocahontas kept mostly to herself, but Merida had cottoned on that Cinderella was willing to mend clothes and pounced on this fact with glee. Now every other day she had a frock to hand over with a busted seam, a ripped hem or, worryingly, claw marks.

"I don't know who's worse," Ariel laughed, watching Cinderella stitch up yet another gown. "Her for getting you to do her work, or you for letting her."

"I don't mind," Cinderella answered simply, and she really didn't. She liked to have something to do with her hands.

Ariel, for her part, had a habit of going through everyone's luggage and grilling them about what she found in them. Cinderella learned that some of the stuff the other princesses brought on retreat were specifically to give to Ariel to add to her vast collection (which now included a beaverskin pelt, several painted paper fans, a hooked rug and a roll of tartan.)

Belle spent a good chunk of her time either stocking the library or reading in it. Someone had to check the library every night to make sure she actually got to bed and hadn't just curled up at the bottom of a bookcase to sleep there. She was always making promises to dust, or clear away the dishes, or weed the garden, but 'forgot' (ie: got distracted by yet another book.)

Snow was a sweetheart, and the only person in the chateau more task-driven than Cinderella herself. She didn't know what to do with herself if she wasn't helping someone, and if she wasn't given a job she tended to wander out into the forest to find injured birds or rabbits to help, where Pocahontas or Merida would find her hours later, hopelessly lost. Cinderella roped her into helping with the darning, and that kept her happy for a while.

Jasmine was lazy, and it seemed like her only real hobby was watching Rapunzel paint. The rest of the time she drank endless cups of jasmine tea, stretched out on a long cushion, complaining about how cold it was. She might not have been so cold if she had worn more clothes, (and surely somebody must have said something about that!) but she seemed to enjoy stretching out her long supple limbs to make the other girls blush.

Anna was a livewire, always getting into something. Tiana had banned her from the kitchen after 'the cake incident', a thing that they would not speak of without a shudder. Since then she tried cajoling the others into playing tennis, going for a swim in the frigid lake, or riding out to the nearest town to go shopping for sweets. Her sister Elsa, on the other hand, was much more reserved and kept to herself mostly. She had demonstrated her magical ice powers only once, to explain what they were, and hadn't made so much as a single snowflake since.

Aurora, however, was the one that intrigued Cinderella the most.

Despite having just as humble a background as Cinderella or Belle, she had the grace and composure of someone born and raised on the throne. She was unflappable, surprised by nothing, and spoke of everything with a note of humour.

"It occurred to me long before they actually told me," she said while talking about the fairies who had brought her up. "They weren't terribly good at being humans. I think if I hadn't learned to cook by the time I was five we'd have all been dead from food poisoning!"

She finished the story with a laugh, and Cinderella envied her good humour. She still couldn't find anything funny about her own past.

By the second month of her retreat, she had noticed that the other princesses seemed to pair off, naturally coming together in subtle ways. Elsa plucking a bramble from Merida's hair, Snow White trailing behind Tiana like a lost puppy, Mulan sharing a couch and a teapot with Jasmine every evening, Rapunzel and Anna giggling together under a table.

One morning she turned a corner just in time to see Ariel kiss Belle, perched on her lap, the book she had been reading tossed carelessly on the ground. She had nearly shouted her surprise but managed to hold it in, and backed out of the room.

Both women were married. To men.

But once she had seen it, it suddenly seemed to be everywhere. The other princesses held hands with each other, hugged with abandon, stroked injured skin to comfort, hinted at a greater intimacy with their body language.

For a long time she tried to explain it away to herself as completely innocent, as just girls who had become close friends bonding through tactile comfort.

Until she caught Jasmine coming out of Mulan's chambers, fixing her clothes with a satisfied grin.

…..

There was a splotch on the floor.

Reddish brown, about the size of a coin, faded into the carpet but not faded enough to be invisible. Her eye was drawn to it every time she walked past it.

She tackled it with soap, with baking soda, with good strong elbow grease, but it clung to the carpet no matter what she did. As she scrubbed she wondered what had caused it; Rapunzel's paint maybe, or spilled tea from Jasmine's teapot, or even blood from Pocahontas' bare feet.

She found herself on her knees in front of the stain long after everyone else had gone to bed. The sun went down and rose again and she was still there. Her knees ached, her hands were chafed and raw. She thought about it constantly. She kept it a secret from the others, they would judge her for not being able to get it clean. Or they'd judge her for doing common work in the first place.

(Deep down, she knew she was being unreasonable.)

Then one night, Aurora's small white feet popped into her line of sight as she ran the rough brush over the stain again and again and again and...

"Ella," she said kindly but sternly. "What are you doing?"

"There's a stain," Cinderella muttered. "I need to get it out."

"No, there's not. We talked about this."

 _ _Had they? Really?__

Distantly she recalled that there was a conversation. She had agreed, then, that there was no stain. But of course that was wrong, because the stain was very much there, staring up at her through the suds.

Aurora knelt, and took her ( _ _raw, painful__ ) hands in her own, gently pushing the scrub brush out of her grasp.

"Let's make a deal," she offered with a reassuring smile. "We'll go to bed, and if the stain is still there tomorrow, I'll help you clean it. Okay?"

 _ _It will have to be gone before dawn, or stepmother will be...__

 _ _...oh.__

"Yes," she mumbled. "All right."

"Good," Aurora sighed, rising to her feet and pulling Cinderella up with her. "I need to ask a favour."

"Of course," Cinderella said.

"I need you to sleep with me. Just for tonight."

Cinderella started, and Aurora laughed weakly.

"Not like that. I just need to get some sleep," she explained. "And I've been having nightmares lately."

Now that she looked properly, Aurora did look tired. Her normally lustrous hair was limp and there were dark pockets under her eyes.

"I haven't had them for a while," she continued. "But they're getting worse."

"What do you dream of?" Cinderella asked.

"Nothing much," Aurora said. "Nothing really scary...mostly it's the __lack__ of anything to be afraid of...that makes no sense, I'm sorry..."

It made perfect sense. Cinderella knew about the cursed sleep, how Aurora had been woken up, but that slumber...knowing nothing, feeling nothing, just a vast expanse of nothing, that truly was terrifying.

"If it looks like you're sleeping too deeply, I'll wake you up," Cinderella offered.

Relief flooded Aurora's classically beautiful face. She thanked Cinderella with grace.

In Aurora's bed, she drew close to Cinderella and fell into sleep hard. Her lithe body pressed flush against Cinderella's, her breasts grazing her arm with every steady breath, their feet entwined, her hand on the pouch of her stomach.

She had slept with her husband many nights since they married, but it was not like this. She loved and desired her husband, but not like this. Every nerve ending tingled, she felt her nightclothes dampen with sweat. Unconsciously, Aurora's body moved closer and Cinderella cradled her, drew the skin uncovered by their clothes together, relishing the feel of the other woman's heat.

Aurora smiled, mumbled something, sank against the pillow.

Was this what the other girls had with each other? Was this the purpose of the retreat, to form these bonds that soothed the old wounds of the past? Or was it just some satisfying fun to be had before going back to husband, kingdom and duty?

Did it really matter, to know what it was all about?

Cinderella closed her eyes and slept.


	2. Chapter 2

**Kindred**

 **Chapter Two**

Although these are more or less one-shots, I figured they'd be better off kept together. Each princess will get a focus chapter, at least one. You can always help me choose who goes next by commenting.

Note: This is an obligatory suggestion that if you enjoy my work you may enjoy the novel I've published on Kindle: The Hothouse Princesses by S.A. Hemstock. Supporting my original work means I get to create more fanwork. (But it's by no means a requirement, so enjoy either way!)

…..

 _I must be a good girl._

The mantra was a constant, from as far back as she could remember. It started back when her mother was still alive, so beautiful and good and beloved that she wanted to be just like her.

 _I must be a good girl._

In the days after the death of the queen, when the king was so lost in grief and the princess' own tears seemed to distress him even more, she quelled her upset to spare him.

 _I must be a good girl._

When he remarried, and her stepmother was so beautiful but so cold, and seemed to brush her away like a disgusting insect on the hem of her gown, and her father wanted so much for them to love each other she crushed her unhappiness down as far as it would go and smiled, to make him happy (though it never made _her_ happy.)

 _I must be a good girl._

Her father died, and the queen was too focused on her own fading beauty to notice her tiptoeing around the castle, trying to put on a brave face so as not to trouble anyone. When the queen did notice her, and told the princess that she needed to do more to help her, she agreed.

 _I must be a good girl._

She was given rags to wear and the dirtiest jobs to do, the jobs only the lowliest of scullery maids were given, and the humiliation and exhaustion burned itself into the core of her, she cried in her sleep because she was not conscious to stop herself. She smiled and sang as she worked, because what else could she do?

 _I must be a good girl._

…..

"Do you think she'll notice?" Snow said, holding up one of Rapunzel's gowns to the light. A pale blue blotch still marked the hem.

"I wouldn't worry," Cinderella replied. "She knows what happens when the paint is too wet, it's not our fault we couldn't get it all out."

They were on laundry duty that week, and it suited Cinderella to the ground. She seemed to like housework, although she sometimes got a little too focused on random stains and marks. The fact that she was so blasé about a paint splotch was a good sign.

"But...won't she be upset?" Snow asked.

Cinderella fixed her with a strange look, the one she got a lot from the other princesses. What was behind that look she had yet to figure out.

"I don't think she'll even notice," Ella laughed at last. "Let's just hang them out and be done with it so we can have tea in the kitchen."

Just as they were coming in from the garden, Merida and Pocahontas arrived back from God knows where. Pocahontas bid them a quiet greeting and wandered off, leaving damp bare footprints in the carpet, but Merida (whose gown was covered in mud and had at least one busted seam) started pulling off her clothes in the doorway.

"Can I give you these?" she said, tossing her gown and stockings in Cinderella's general direction. She thanked them without waiting for a response and wandered into the castle in her undergarments.

"I don't think I even want to know what they've been up to," Ella groaned, gingerly picking up the muddy gown.

"Pocahontas didn't look nearly as dirty though," Snow chimed in.

"Well, when your dress is that short it's hard to get too messy," Jasmine quipped.

Ella and Snow jumped. When had Jasmine appeared?

"I suppose," Snow agreed, scrutinizing Jasmine's satisfied smile.

"I'm always saying you should make the gowns a little shorter, here at least," Jasmine explained. "Then we wouldn't have so much laundry."

"For the last time, _stop walking around in your undergarments!"_ they all heard someone cry from upstairs. It sounded like Belle.

Jasmine sighed.

"I live in hope," she said before walking away.

…..

 _I must be a good girl._

 _I must not make trouble for anyone._

Calling for help counted as making trouble, in Snow's mind. Her idea had been to gather some wildflowers after hearing Tiana complain that the kitchen looked dreary, but she had followed a crop of bluebells right across the river, been spooked by a running fox and was now lost.

Again.

She had promised herself she wouldn't get lost any more, not after being found so many times by either Merida or Pocahontas on their rambles and having them escort her back home. But it was harder than she expected, every time. These particular woods were awfully dark and deceptive with how deep they were. The trees grew close together and there were no clear paths.

 _How do those two manage it?_

At least the animals were friendly. She could feel beady little eyes looking at her in the darkness. She'd always managed to endear herself to animals, more so than humans. (Though she loved her husband, and the dwarves, and her princess friends very much.)

She had just coaxed a bluebird onto her hand and was asking it for directions when she felt the distinct prickle of human presence behind her.

"Oh, Snow. Again?"

She crumpled on the inside at the tone of Pocahontas' voice. She sounded...disappointed? Frustrated? Annoyed? But it was accompanied by a warm chuckle.

"I didn't mean it," she said quietly. "I was picking wildflowers and a fox gave me a fright...but I'll be okay, I'll be on my way out soon, so don't worry..."

"I'll walk with you," Pocahontas said smoothly. "I was just about to return myself."

Snow felt awful. Clearly Pocahontas had no intention of going home just yet but felt obligated to help Snow out of the forest. Her stepmother's voice, unbidden, echoed in her head.

 _You're not a child anymore, don't expect me to hold your hand._

Funny, she had been just twelve years old when the queen said those words. Looking back, she was still very much a child.

Pocahontas was quiet as always, deftly stepping over roots and under branches and offering a hand to help Snow past the difficult places, a hand Snow was reluctant to take. She brought their journey to a brief halt, in front of an enormous tree with vast twisted branches.

"The forests are so different here," Pocahontas murmured, more to herself than to Snow.

"Really? How so?" Snow asked.

"Back home, the trees are very straight," she explained, walking away from the large tree back to the trail. "They go on forever, but you can see through them on a clear day. The trees here grow into each other. It is strange, but I like it."

"Is that why you're always in here?" Snow asked. She had that prickly sense that she was asking too much, she was making trouble, but this was the most words Pocahontas had ever spoken to her and she wanted it to continue.

"I suppose," Pocahontas chuckled. "Though back home I was always in the forest as well. My father despaired of me...he wanted to know why the spirits had given him a deer instead of a daughter."

"The first time I ended up in the forest I was so scared," Snow blurted out. "I thought all the trees were trying to kill me."

Pocahontas stopped in her tracks and looked back at her, half-concerned and half-amused.

"They do look like they're reaching out, don't they?" she murmured, stroking the jagged branch of a nearby chestnut. "But a tree will never wish any harm upon you, unless you wish harm upon it. Trees are protectors of man."

Snow had heard whispers of Pocahontas' strange ways, how she worshiped trees and soil and that was why she never wore shoes. In the castle, it sounded ridiculous, but in the forest the trees suddenly seemed to hum with life. She hadn't thought of it before, but in a way her fear of the trees had lead her directly to the dwarves, her protectors.

"If you put your trust in the trees, they will never allow you to be lost," Pocahontas continued, holding a branch out of Snow's way. "They lead you to me, didn't they?"

They had.

…..

After dropping her off at the castle, Pocahontas turned around and walked straight back into the forest. Regardless of what she had said, Snow really had caused trouble for her.

 _I must be a good girl._

Rapunzel and Anna were playing badminton on the lawn, Mulan and Jasmine watching them from a spread rug. Rapunzel kept tripping over her own hair and Anna her own feet, but they were howling with laughter and covered with grass stains.

 _More laundry._

But that was a good thing; it would keep her busy and keep her out of trouble. When the week was up she'd have to find some other task to keep busy with.

"Snow!" Jasmine called from the rug and beckoned her over. "Come join us!"

Truthfully, Snow found Jasmine and Mulan to be rather intimidating. Mulan was nice enough but full of stories of fighting men with swords that left Snow feeling a little breathless. Jasmine was almost _too_ nice, and had a way of looking at someone from head to toe that made Snow feel squirmy (although it didn't seem to bother anyone else.)

Nevertheless, she joined them.

"Who's winning?" she asked politely.

"No idea," Jasmine shrugged. "I don't think either have scored a proper point."

"I'd know if I understood the game," Mulan sighed. "It just looks like a lot of jumping and screaming to me."

Just then, the game was interrupted by a plainly furious Tiana. She was holding the molasses pot in one arm and a sticky spoon in the other.

"Who did this?" she bellowed with impressive force.

"Good Lord, did someone finish the _entire pot_?" Jasmine asked innocently, scrunching up her nose with delicate distaste.

"It wasn't me," Rapunzel claimed, unwrapping her racket from her hair. "That stuff gets in my hair, you know that!"

"Me either!" Anna blurted, but her face looked suspiciously red.

"Well, it was one of you!" Tiana shouted, dangling the spoon between two fingers. "It was full this morning and everyone else is out, so it had to have been one of you!"

"Count me out," Mulan shrugged. "I hate molasses."

"I only like a little with my tea," Jasmine chipped in, stirring her tiny cup with an equally tiny spoon.

Tiana was now glaring hard at Anna, who was very obviously the culprit (and whose sister wasn't around to defend her, even if she'd wanted to.) A flustered Anna pointed in Snow's direction.

"Snow was here this morning," she said. "Have you asked her?"

"No, and you know why?" Tiana said smoothly, putting down the pot and throwing a motherly arm around Snow's shoulders. "Because, unlike the rest of you, Snow is a _good girl!"_

It was so unexpected to hear it said, out loud, even with sarcasm, that a little something burst inside Snow. She tried to stop herself but it was no good. She wailed suddenly, startling them all, and sobbed into Tiana's arm.

"Okay fine, it was me," Anna admitted, sheepishly.


	3. Chapter 3

**Kindred**

 **Chapter Three**

This chapter is a little later than I would have liked, my health has not been very good lately so updates on this as well as my other fics may be sporadic. Thank you for reading thus far. Also, someone in the comments asked if I was going to do a set on the princes, but I'm sorry to say I probably won't. I just don't find them as interesting as the princesses. I could do one or two on request though.

Also also, here is my obligatory link to my novel: dp/B07BGSPPBY

UK link: . /dp/B07BGSPPBY

…..

Years later, when most monarchies were gone and somewhat forgotten, there would be a term invented for Tiana's particular ailment.

 _Imposter syndrome._

Traveling back and forth between Maldonia and New Orleans during the first year of her marriage, she had painted on a smile and done what was expected of her. She got what she wanted; her restaurant did well even when she wasn't around to run it, Maldonia's royal family welcomed her warmly and the people seemed to love her. Their wedding date was a national holiday.

 _How long can all this last?_

If life had taught her anything, it had taught her that blissful happiness was always followed by a terrible blow. There was pressure to produce an heir to the throne, Naveen would have his head turned eventually, the kingdom would be overthrown by a coup with the revolutionaries blaming the state of the nation on their prince's decision to marry a common foreigner who worked a menial job.

She knew she was being ridiculous, but it was hard to stop.

When she got the notice that she was to go on the retreat with the other princesses, she felt like she was going to her doom. She'd gotten away with it thus far, but if anyone could suss out a pretender, it would be a real life princess.

…..

"At least let me wash the dishes," Cinderella insisted. "Snow can help...she's looking for a job to do."

"No, it's okay," Tiana insisted back. "I like doing dishes. I used every pot and pan in this place, it's hardly fair to make you do them..."

"It's perfectly fair," Ella argued. "If you make all the meals, you should leave the dishes for the rest of us. Take the night off, do something else. I promise we won't wreck the kitchen."

Ella held up her hands on that last note and laughed softly. Tiana sighed.

"I'm not worried about you wrecking the kitchen..." she said.

"I can set Snow at the door to keep Anna out," Ella suggested.

Tiana snorted, and then felt bad because Anna was such a nice girl even if she was a walking disaster waiting to happen.

 _And who am I to judge her? She's a real princess..._

"Honestly, it's fine," Tiana said as she shook that thought out of her head. "Maybe you can take over breakfast tomorrow, how about that?"

"Deal," Ella nodded, and walked away with that enviable poise that Tiana admired so much.

It was hard to believe Ella had ever been a scullery maid, or Snow for that matter. They did perform domestic work very well but always with a kind of inhuman grace, as though they were dancing instead of sweeping the floors or washing windows. Aurora was much the same, although she had only ever had to keep a small woodland cottage clean.

The others were not that used to housework, although they all pitched in in some ways. Rapunzel had only ever done chores out of boredom and wasn't very thorough when she could be painting or running around the garden instead. Ariel had never even heard of dust before she came to the surface, and was too easily distracted by random objects to be given any hard work.

Elsa cleaned the bathrooms with ease; she covered all the fixtures with a thin layer of ice and then melted it to run down the drain. Anna considered this cheating but nobody else really minded. Anna herself was just asked to dust the stairs and the rafters, because anything delicate nearby would risk her falling onto it, into it or up against it. At least with the hardwood fixtures there was minimal risk.

Merida and Pocahontas couldn't be relied on to stay in the castle for long enough to do any work, so they usually brought back something useful from their forest jaunts. Merida was particularly skilled at bringing back rabbits, hares and wild geese (and equally skilled at skinning and butchering them which Tiana found too upsetting to do herself) and Pocahontas tended to find wild vegetables for the vegetable plot, medicinal herbs and fish. Both of them brought in enough firewood to keep the kitchen hearth going all day and night.

Lazy as she was, Jasmine was more reliable than Belle to get the occasional chore done. She would moan and complain about it as she was doing it, but she wouldn't keep putting it off until she'd finished the next chapter as Belle often did (and mostly by the time she finished said chapter, the job would have been done by somebody else, usually Snow.) Mulan would cheerfully do anything that was asked of her, but she went about it in strange confusing ways. She burned strong incense in rooms instead of airing them, did the laundry with vinegar instead of soap and when asked just shrugged and said it was how things were done at home.

The only real constant was that the kitchen had been marked out as Tiana's territory since the day she arrived. Although most of the other girls could cook, and some were actually _very_ good at it, Tiana took over almost all meals and chores relating to the kitchen. She restocked it from the local market once a week, and in the evenings read a book in front of the fire or sat talking at the hearth with whichever princess had come in to share a cup of tea with her.

In a sense, she knew why she was there. She felt at home in the kitchen, anywhere else in the castle (including her own bedroom) gave her a tight panicked feeling. She knew very well that housekeepers and other castle staff spent their entire lives in the kitchen and in a household like this she was looking and acting like a housekeeper.

Maybe that was why the other girls came down there so often to talk to her, to sit on the uncomfortable rickety stools instead of the plush chairs in the parlour. Subconsciously perhaps they wanted to remind her that she was among equals.

…..

"Could you repeat that?" Tiana asked, pencil poised over her notepad.

" _Prinsesstarta,"_ Elsa said again. "It means princess cake."

"I guessed that part. So, what do we need for it?"

"Eggs, at least a dozen. Flour, sugar, cream, milk, raspberries...and marzipan."

"I'll have to get the marzipan in the next town over," Tiana said, frowning down at the list. "Everything else is doable, except raspberries are out of season."

"Oh," Elsa said, looking crestfallen.

"What about those little lumpy ones...you know, the black ones?" Ariel piped up from her seat by the fire. "They're really good!"

"Blackberries?" Tiana asked.

"Yes, blackberries! Although we'd have to get more, I ate the last few."

"Blackberries could work," Elsa mused. "It's not traditional but I don't think Anna will mind as long as it looks like a _prinsesstarta_..."

"I'll ask Pocahontas to pick up a basket next time she goes into the forest," Tiana confirmed. "Do you have a picture for me to copy? I've never made one of these, obviously..."

"Oh, well..." Elsa stammered. "I was hoping to make it myself."

That little unreasonable shred of panic flared up in Tiana.

"It's tradition," Elsa continued. "It has to look exactly right, I know it's silly but..."

"No, it's not silly," Tiana croaked with false confidence. "Sure, I'll leave out all the stuff for you here, and you can call me when you're done so I can wash up..."

"Oh no," Elsa demurred. "I couldn't ask you to wash up after I've cooked. I'll leave the place spotless, please don't worry."

 _Great, now on top of being a fake princess they think I'm obsessed with the kitchen. That's just wonderful._

Struggling with her sense of impending doom, she got all the needed ingredients for Elsa to make Anna's much missed childhood treat and left the kitchen ready for her.

 _What do I do now?_

Alone in the hallway, away from the kitchen, she was struck by how little she knew the girls she had been living with for so long. Even the friendliest of conversations had taken place with the kitchen acting as a safety net for her. Being out in the hall might as well have been out at sea; the sense of drifting away was the same.

Early on, Tiana had been hopeful that she and Pocahontas would stick together, being from the same country. But Pocahontas was as alien as any of the others, arguably moreso because she so rarely spoke and spent so much time out of the castle. Tiana knew as much about Native American culture as the next African American, which was to say not a lot, and while Pocahontas had never been less than polite she sometimes seemed to look at Tiana with what she thought was disapproval.

 _Does she feel like she's not supposed to be here? Is that why she keeps leaving?_

Light footsteps sounded behind her in the hall, and she felt a small hand on her shoulder.

"You look a bit lost," Mulan laughed. "You can hide in my room if you want, until Elsa's done."

 _Am I that obvious?_

She let Mulan lead her to her bedroom. At once Tiana felt her eyes water at the incense permeating the air but she tried not to cough. A real princess probably wouldn't cough. Mulan sat at a low table surrounded by thick cushions and beckoned Tiana to sit with her.

On the table, several sheets of silky-looking paper were spread out, some blank, some with beautifully composed Chinese characters painted on them. A small bottle of ink and a brush sat proudly in the middle.

"Do you know what your name means?" Mulan asked, picking up her brush.

"Um..." Tiana thought hard. "Highest beauty, I think."

"Hmm," Mulan hummed, the tip of the brush tapping at her mouth. " _Zuígáo dí méi..._ that's not quite right but it's as close as I can get."

"What are you doing?" Tiana asked, watching her carefully dip the brush in the ink.

" _Shúfá,"_ Mulan explained. "It's writing, but it's also art. I'm not very good, but I've done everyone's names. Except yours."

The brush swept over the paper in graceful strokes, and though the characters looked complex Mulan had them painted in the blink of an eye. Four characters, descending in a perfect line.

最 高 的 美

Mulan stamped the edge of the page with a small red stamp, blew on it gently and placed it in front of Tiana.

"There you are," she said. "That's all of you."

It was strange to look on her own name like this. She had written it on cheques, on letters and envelopes, on her marriage registry, a hundred thousand places. She had written it beside the word _Princess_ and felt that awful sick feeling that it was a mistake, that her name wasn't meant to be there.

But this...

Rendered in black ink on fine handmade paper, painted by a girl as graceful as any masterpiece artist, this looked like the name of a real princess.

"Thank you," she said earnestly, though it felt like she could never say it enough.

For the first time, she felt at ease in the castle.


	4. Chapter 4

**Kindred**

 **Chapter Four**

Note: This update, along with my other updated fics, is a bit later than I would have liked. Unfortunately my health is poor at the moment and I'm on extended bed rest for a while, and I find it hard to write while on bed rest. Hopefully I won't be stuck like this for long.

Also, here is my obligatory Kindle novel plug, so that if I do have to go off grid for a while you might still have something to read until I come back.

US link: dp/B07BGSPPBY

UK link: . /dp/B07BGSPPBY

PS note: Aspects of this fic deal with locality, but I am working from a self-created canon that while some countries have the same names as ones IRL, they have radically different histories and land mass. So Belle's France is not the France that experienced the revolution.

…..

 _I want adventure in the great white somewhere..._

It was hard to believe she had been so naive back then. Once the beast regained his human form and proposed, she had thought that her great adventure, which had started in the crumbling manor with the enchanted crockery, was going to kick into high gear.

She hadn't thought it would end right there.

Even though Prince Adam's branch of the royal family was supposedly in exile, once he was human again the advisers running the kingdom for the ten-year-old boy king were suddenly very concerned about him marrying a peasant girl.

 _Officially his royal highness Adam is permitted to marry any woman he chooses, so long as she is chaste and without blemish on her character, but do understand that any children born of this union are possible heirs to the throne and the people of our great nation do not look favourably on mixing the blood in this way._

The many, many letters they had been sent from the capital were just polite enough to insult Belle without causing any real friction, a skill they had no doubt polished in the royal court. Thanks to their meddling, it had taken three years for them to marry, and they didn't dare risk a pregnancy yet. They rarely left the manor, they needed to inform the capital whenever they wanted to leave, and Adam was so often writing long letters and meeting with advisers that Belle had nothing to do but wander the building trying not to get in the way.

Even the manors' staff, who had been so kind and friendly to her when her husband was a monster, were so bogged down with the work that came with hosting constant visitors that they were brusque with her, and though she knew they meant no unkindness she couldn't help but be hurt by it.

"It comes with the territory, dear," Mrs Potts told her once, in between tiredly juggling loads of laundry and pulling down drapes. "These people have more responsibilities than rights, and you're one of them now."

"It doesn't feel like it," Belle mumbled back.

"It should get easier with time," Mrs Potts assured her, and then she was gone.

She had so much time she managed to read every book in the library twice over. It was the closest to adventure that she was ever likely to get now.

…..

"Knock knock," Rapunzel sang from the doorway. "Is anyone alive in here?"

Belle looked up, and was shocked to see that somehow between coming to the library that morning and Rapunzel popping in to check on her, the sun had set and the moon was high in the sky.

"Oh," she mumbled, closing her book. "I was supposed to be on dishes today..."

"It's no problem, Jasmine skipped her last turn so she did them," Rapunzel shrugged. "We left you a plate on the stove."

Belle only realized then that her stomach was growling.

"It must have been a very good book," Rapunzel said as they walked to the kitchen together.

"Yes, it was fascinating," Belle enthused, nimbly stepping over Rapunzel's trailing hair. "It's funny, the story I came across was very old and supposedly from far in the south, but it sounds a lot like how Ella met her husband..."

Ella was still in the kitchen when they came in, and she looked up as her name was spoken. A few of the girls had lingered by the heat of the stove. Tiana went to grab Belle's plate from the oven.

"What's this about my husband?" Ella asked.

"Oh, I was just telling Rapunzel about a story I read, it sounds very like what happened to you," Belle explained as Tiana placed her dinner in front of her.

"Goodness, I didn't think they'd be writing about it already," Ella laughed softly.

"No, that's the thing. It's a very old story, it predates your kingdom. And mine, for that matter. A courtesan had her shoe stolen by an eagle that dropped it in the lap of an emperor. He supposedly tried it on every woman in the empire before he found the right one, and married her."

"That does sound similar," Ella agreed, an amused smile dancing across her face. "Perhaps that's where my fairy godmother got the idea..."

"I had a nursemaid who told me a story like that," Snow piped up. "I can't remember much of it, but the shoes were made of gold. Silver and gold fell on the girl from the tree that housed her mother's spirit."

"Really?" Belle gasped. "What are the chances your nursemaid read this same story and changed it a bit?"

"Not very likely," Snow replied. "Gerda was such a dear but she wasn't terribly bright."

"There's a story the eunuchs tell the emperor's children at night," Mulan said, turning her stool away from the fire. "It's pretty much the same, but it's a magical fish that gives the girl a magnificent silk dress. The shoes were said to be the size of a teacup."

"A teacup?" Aurora said as her elegant nose wrinkled in distaste. "Why on earth would they be so small?"

"Foot binding," Mulan shrugged. "I assume they practiced it when the story was written. I don't know why they leave it in now though."

"I heard a story once," Jasmine drawled. She had forgone the rickety stools to lay one of her many hooked rugs by the fire. "There was no dress and no shoes. The djinn just covered her in actual silver and gold and jewels. I assume that besides that, she was naked."

"That's a risky move," Tiana laughed.

"It worked, though," Jasmine said with a sultry grin.

"All of these stories were created in very different places," said Belle. "Really, what are the chances that they'd end up so similar?"

"Mama told me once all people have a common thread, no matter where they come from," Tiana mused. "Suppose the same goes for people's stories."

 _They do, don't they?_

…..

Within an hour of the conversation in the kitchen, Belle was gathering supplies. She had read enough books to understand the basics of book-binding, and the castle had no shortage of quills, ink and paper.

Along with Ella's story, she discovered that her own story wasn't a once-off. Across the world there were tales of maidens marrying lions, bears, dragons, hideously deformed men, even a seagull. Most of them ended with the maiden curing her beast with the power of love, though the seagull story ended with the bride running away and having her fingers chopped off by her father.

When the books in the castle library ran out of stories, she asked her fellow princesses for their own fireside tales.

Aurora's stories were similar to the books Belle had read when she lived in the village, but with more exotic details. She spoke of an old woman called Baba Yaga who lived in a hut with chicken's legs and could do good or evil, depending on who encountered her. There was also a magical bird made of fire that often popped up to help the heroes of the story, even when said heroes were trying to kidnap the bird.

Ella knew very few stories, although she had been well read as a child her father had focused highly on her education regarding history and math, and when he died and she was left with her stepmother she was worked so hard she collapsed exhausted into bed every night. She supposed she wouldn't have been allowed to read for pleasure even if she had wanted to. She did, however, remember one story a schoolteacher had told a crowd of small children in the market square; the tale of how Reynard the Fox held his own funeral to bring his enemies out to mourn him.

Jasmine was a goldmine of stories. Her early childhood had been spent in the harem with her mother and her father's other concubines, and they often told stories to pass the time. They were fantastical epics, peppered with djinn hiding in lamps and rings and holding up the four corners of the earth,sea voyages plagued by monsters and unreasonable tasks handed down by unsympathetic caliphs. The stories often ran into each other so that by the time Jasmine had finished one, another had begun. Some of them were pretty bawdy as well, to the point that Belle often left Jasmine's room with a bright red face.

Rapunzel really only knew three stories, as three books written for children were all she had access to in her tower. One was a charming tale about a little girl in a red cloak pursued by a tricky wolf, another was about a boy and a girl captured by a witch after being caught eating her house (ironic considering whose tower she had been held in at the time she read it) and a very strange tale of a housekeeper who accidentally ate two chickens she was preparing for her master's guest and tricked the master into scaring away the guest with a butcher knife.

Mulan's stories featured many animals, but none more present than the dragon. The dragons of her land were very different from the dragons Belle was familiar with, benevolent snakelike creatures that bestowed great gifts on mortals they deemed worthy. She told a very amusing tale about the animals of the zodiac racing for a place in the heavens, how the rat had tricked the cat into missing the race and how they had been enemies ever since.

Merida's stories, when she could be kept inside for long enough to tell them, were full of war and murder. She discovered that the people of Merida's lands were distrustful of fairies and employed a long list of superstitions to keep them at bay (which explained the iron horseshoe Merida had hanging over her doorway). Water spirits disguised as horses tricked people into getting on their backs and then galloped into the depths, drowning their victim, and a man could be bound by a magical taboo that brought death if he violated it.

Strange as Merida's tales were, Tiana's were even stranger. They were supposedly passed down by a spider, Anansi, who was an intelligent trickster often set against the other animals. He fought the figure of death itself in some of the tales, and Tiana's stories were very concerned with death, what lay beyond it and people who could hop back and forth between the two. She spoke sometimes of the 'shadow man' but she was reluctant to go into details.

Snow's stories were as sweet as she herself was, because she had just been a child when she was told of them. She was the first to tell of an old saint who left gifts for good children in winter, and a spring festival celebrated with floral crowns, painted eggs and a spirit that made the trees and plants bloom. She told a tale similar to her own, though the person who fell into the enchanted sleep was an old man rather than a young princess.

Anna told the tales before Elsa could get a word in edgeways. Frost giants and troll-infested forests, a god that created thunder by riding a chariot through the clouds, underground cave systems teeming with goblins who could be warded off by singing at them. Anna was eager to tell these stories, though she sometimes got distracted and forgot what she was trying to say, so documenting her stories could was a long process.

Elsa managed to tell one story, late at night when everyone else was in bed and Belle was still in the library. It was a sad tale of a boy who caught a shard of enchanted glass in his eye that lead to him being spirited away by an evil queen of snow, and how his childhood friend traveled to the ends of the earth to find him and bring him back. It was the most words Belle had ever heard Elsa speak at once.

Pocahontas was hard to pin down, but once Belle did she talked readily enough. Her stories were fascinating, the world was full of spirits of men, plants and animals, and they could be called on for aid providing you knew how to reach them. Men practiced medicine to change their shapes to those of animals, and an enemy could still hurt you after death if you disrespected his remains. Women changed into trees and mountains and rivers and hosted their children's children on the wealth of their bodies.

There were enough stories to fill three books, and by the time Belle had those books written and began a fourth the other girls had thought of more stories.

"You'd get many more stories from our subjects," Ariel mentioned as she reached the end of her ocean tales. "Eels are excellent storytellers, everyone knows. Though I'd have to translate for you. There are things in the bottom of the sea not even the bravest mermaid has seen."

"What kind of things?" Belle asked.

Ariel's stories were the most outlandish yet, because her people had been so isolated from the surface world and the sea was full of the most alien creatures and places.

"There's a giant at the centre of the earth, they say," Ariel whispered, leaning in close enough to make Belle blush. "If a mortal lays eyes on it, they lose their minds. It is sleeping now, but one day it will wake up, and then..."

"And then what?"

"No idea," she shrugged. "So you'd have to ask yourself, I can't remember."

"I'm not allowed to leave the grounds, unfortunately," Belle grumbled.

"You can if it's a diplomatic assignment," Ariel told her. "That's the first thing I learned. Eric isn't allowed travel as he pleases, but I can as long as I'm trying to improve relations with other nations. I can write to your council to ask for you to visit."

Even after all this time, the solution to all of Belle's problems could be found within a book, even if that book was one she was writing herself.


	5. Chapter 5

**Kindred**

 **Chapter Five**

Note: This fic is in the unfortunate position of being put in the background compared to other fics and fandoms I'm working with, but it does hold a special place in my heart and since I'm just out of hospital and therefore not the most coherent right now bits of this may be a bit garbled. If you notice anything off, please let me know. Also, if you would like to see a particular princess tackled next, do let me know. I have no specific pattern to them at the moment.

…..

For all the lovely things built in her honour and gifted to her as the sultan's only child, Jasmine's favourite place from very early on in her life was the harem. The women there were always delighted to see her, and they fawned and pampered her with a genuine pleasure she could never get from the palace slaves or officials. It didn't even seem odd to her (not until years later, anyway) that she had no idea which of them was her mother.

Officially, the empress consort was her 'mother', being the woman her father married when he began his sultanate. She rarely saw Sultana Fatima, and in any case she was past childbearing age when Jasmine was born. She had her own chambers in the palace and when she did leave them, she was always covered in so many layers of bejeweled cloth that it was hard to see her face. Jasmine knew her less than she knew the lowliest slave in the palace.

Nobody would speak of who the woman who had given birth to her was, and Jasmine would spend long hours trying to puzzle out who was the most likely.

Perhaps it was beautiful Laila, whose long glossy black hair and lithe body made her a favourite of the sultan's.

Perhaps it was sweet Zariah, dark as a panther with a voice as light and melodic as the most prized songbirds.

Or Salma, who was enormously fat but whose sparkling wit made her another of the sultan's favourites.

Or even Aimee, who had been taken from some strange faraway place and who rarely spoke, whose white hair and sapphire-blue eyes made her the most exotic girl in the harem.

Perhaps it was Noor or Saniya, identical sisters who did everything together, including spending time with the sultan.

Even, if it were possible, it was Malak, who had entered the harem when she was a child as the daughter of Zainab, who served the previous sultan. Jasmine supposed she would have been too young to give birth at the age she would have been when Jasmine was born, but who knew? She and Malak did have similar eyes and a mouth in common.

She knew who she wanted it to be; Tasneem, who was full of stories to tell as she braided Jasmine's hair in the most elaborate of ways, who always saved her the best sweets and gave the best advice when it came to women's problems. She was mother to all of the harem girls in this fashion, though at times Jasmine greedily wanted to hog her attention all to herself.

It was curious that with so many beautiful, intelligent, sweet and accomplished women in the harem only one had ever given birth to a living child, and that child a girl to boot. Had any of them given birth to a son, they would have been raised to the position of first royal concubine, a position second only to the empress herself. Jasmine wondered about this often.

"The sultan does his duty," Tasneem would sigh after being asked yet again. "Allah will bring a son if it is meant to happen."

"Would you like to have a son?" Jasmine would ask, just to hear the answer she knew would follow.

"Of course, it would be my honour," Tasneem, or any other harem girl would reply, "but we would dearly love another daughter like you. You bring us such joy, we would not have that with a boy child."

That was the one thing they all had in common, even Aimee who was otherwise so set apart. They adored Jasmine.

Shortly after her thirteenth birthday, she was forbidden to go to the harem, kept in her own chambers for reasons the slaves would not explain. By that evening, the harem would be empty. All of the sultan's favourites had been tied up in sacks and drowned in the river.

One of them, though she never discovered who, had been going to the slave quarters at night to try and conceive a child. If it had not been discovered, and if she had become pregnant with a boy, the throne would have been passed to the child of a slave.

Jasmine supposed she was lucky she wasn't in one of those sacks herself.

…..

The front door clattered open and from her position on the cushions in her chamber, Jasmine could hear light footsteps echoing down the hall. Chuckling to herself, she playfully counted down the seconds until...

"Close the door, for heaven's sake!"

It sounded like Belle; Tiana was the one who spent the most time scolding the others for leaving things lying around or leaving doors open but the voice lacked Tiana's distinct accent.

"They're late tonight," Mulan mused, looking out at the star-filled sky through the chamber window.

"I don't know how they do it," Jasmine chipped in, stroking her teacup. "It's so cold out."

Mulan laughed, rolled her eyes.

"I can't believe you think _this_ is cold," she said. "It would help if you dressed a little warmer..."

"No thank you," Jasmine responded sweetly.

Cold it might have been, but the exposed flesh was a holdover from her days running in and out of the harem. She balked at the idea of draping too much cloth over her body; it reminded her of the old sultana. Even when she died she had been covered so much her face couldn't be seen.

The princesses were, for the most part, too modest and well bred to comment on her body the way the harem women had always done with each other. A blithe comment about someone's hair looking nice or a colour looking well on them was about the extent of it. There were outliers of course; Ariel didn't care much for confining clothes and was more comfortable running around in a nightgown or chemise, Pocahontas left her long limbs exposed as much as Jasmine did (though she was so rarely around she might as well have been covered up) and Merida had a habit of tossing off her clothes at the door if they were stained or torn (as they almost always were.)

Even Tiana, who was otherwise very straitlaced, often finished a long day in the kitchen by popping open the buttons on her blouse and rolling up her skirt until you could see her garters before sinking in front of the fire with a weary sigh. It wasn't much of a thrill for someone who enjoyed looking on a beautiful female body, but it would have to do.

Of all of the girls, only Mulan came close to understanding.

"The emperor has 500 concubines, last time I counted anyway," she confided as they drank tea together in Jasmine's room. "And 100 eunuchs to protect their virtue."

"Virtue?" Jasmine laughed. "I should think virtue is not wanted from a concubine."

"Our emperor is more concerned with intelligence and good family lineage than beauty," Mulan explained. "His last three sons died very young, they were sickly boys. Their mothers were court beauties."

"My father's favourite was so fat she could be rolled into his bedchamber," Jasmine recalled with a sigh. "But she made him laugh."

There was a knock on the door, and when they bid the knocker to enter it was Aurora. Barefoot and fresh from the garden with a basket of fresh strawberries.

"May I join you for tea?" she asked, wiping her damp feet on the rug. "My throat has been scratchy for some time."

"Of course," Mulan agreed, and fetched her a cup.

Jasmine traced what exposed skin she could find on Aurora with her eyes. There was nothing creepy or untoward about it, as others had thought, but an appreciation for her grace and fine features. Aurora always seemed to glide around instead of walking and her easy good humour suffused her form from the inside out. Her neat torso was framed prettily by the loose stomacher and chemise she wore, and the simple grey skirt whispered around her legs as she stepped around the table. She placed her basket in the middle of the table and told them to help themselves.

"What are we talking about today?" she asked after a sip from her cup.

"Concubines," Mulan shrugged. "I don't know how familiar you are..."

"Not at all, I'm afraid," Aurora said. "I know a little from royal correspondence."

"Jasmine was raised in a harem," Mulan told her. "That's why she gives us those _looks_..."

From anyone else, this would have been a mean-spirited joke on Jasmine's upbringing, but as it were the princesses had gradually learned to accept the looks and the comments and the getting-a-little-too-close as just something Jasmine needed to do. It was a quirk; just like Belle's incessant reading, Ella's mysterious spots that needed cleaning, Tiana's anchoring herself to the kitchen.

"My father practically had a harem himself," Aurora mused. "Of course, he didn't call it that, but even before I knew he was my father I'd heard stories about his bickering mistresses. Eight of them in all, can you imagine?"

"Goodness," Mulan laughed softly. "My poor father only had the one. I must tell him when I see him again how badly he's doing."

"Is your palace big enough to support eight mistresses?" Jasmine asked curiously. What she knew of Aurora's homeland was limited, but she knew the fine ladies, especially compared to Aurora's own humble trousseau, tended to gather a lot of belongings.

"Good lord, no," Aurora said, wrinkling her elegant nose. "Even having von Welser and and Pomischel in one building would be too much...we'd have to lock away every weapon in the palace! Probably some of the cutlery too."

"The emperor's mistresses are kept in their own small palaces," Mulan chipped in. "They're notorious for trying to poison each other and each others sons...they say the emperor's sons were sickly but they were probably poisoned."

"How awful," Aurora said. "The worst Pomischel has ever done was threaten to toss her baby out of the window when Father refused to acknowledge it as his...but we didn't really think she'd do it."

Jasmine sipped her tea and said nothing. To think a woman in their court would be permitted to act in such a way and still keep her head...

With the loss of the harem women, a young Jasmine had developed a terror of men. Her father had decided to dispose of them so easily, with barely more of a thought than he might have given to what fruit he wanted for supper. The knowledge that she would one day take such a man as husband, who would drape her in cloth to cover up her person and fill the harem with women he could get rid of as soon as he tired of them, it was a looming threat.

Gracious Tasneem who had nursed him through countless fevers, dutiful Malak who waited on him even when she was sick or upset, jolly Salma who had made him laugh more than any man ever could, sweet Noor and Saniya who went to him together to aid his concentration, poor Aimee who had a smile and a greeting for him even after her four lost babies made her weep every night, lovely Laila who did not seem to mind being given out as a gift to his friends and visiting foreigners, loyal Zariah who sang him to sleep all night as many nights as he bid her to, all those other women she did not know so well, whose beautiful faces and sweet natures blended into each other in a place so big as the harem...

...he snapped his fingers and they were gone.

She had a small measure of power as the Sultan's only living biological child (supposedly, as that one discovered infidelity had called that into question) and she used it to refuse every single man who came to press his claim on her. Every man she just _knew_ would fill the harem for his own gratification and dispose of it when it suited him. He would not have that chance with her.

The Sultan despaired, and locked her away as much as he was able to prevent her from tainting what was left of his legacy with common blood. She loved him, for he was her father, and she hated him, for what he had done to her mothers.

And then this mysterious prince turned up with promises that sounded good in the ears of a man used to deciding women's lives for them, and he managed to sway her with promises and unbelievable sights...but what was more important was that when she found out he was of common birth, she could easily dissuade him from ever creating a harem of his own. He would become a Sultan with no expectations except a desire to make her happy, and she could impose her will on him to make sure no woman in the palace would suffer as her mothers had.

Still...it left an ache. The harem had been so large and the sultan was only one man, so in order to find physical pleasure and comfort the women had often turned to each other. There was no risk of illicit pregnancy, and quite a few of them preferred their dalliances with women in the first place. Indeed, it had stoked a fire in Jasmine that she would have dearly liked to experience this pleasure for herself, but with no harem it was impossible.

 _Is it, really?_

Mulan accepted her closeness without question, often the two of them ended up in bed together cuddling skin-to-skin (such things were not unheard of in China, although a woman was as always expected to settle down with a man) and she _knew_ the other princesses felt certain urges towards each other. One only had to catch the barely-restrained sigh coming from Elsa when she caught sight of Merida in a state of undress, or see how blatantly Rapunzel and Anna held hands when they thought no-one was watching.

Even Ella, as conservative as she was with her affections, could be seen watching Aurora with what could only be described as longing.

"...she did say Pomischel had done it on purpose, but honestly even a woman as ridiculous as she would know better than to cart _smallpox_ around with her on the remote chance it might infect someone besides herself, but anyway there was a _terrific_ argument, I expect..."

Jasmine tuned in just in time to hear Aurora tell a story of her Father's mistresses' exploits. Mulan laughed and poured more tea. Jasmine settled back on her cushions and admired the graceful lines Aurora's limbs made as she told her story.


	6. Chapter 6

**Kindred**

 **Chapter Six**

Note: I find it really weird that I seem to hit zeitgeists so often. I swear I did not know Wreck-It Ralph was going to have cohabiting princesses before I started writing this fic.

…..

To call King Triton the king of the sea was a misnomer. Specifically, he was the king of that warm blue body of water commonly known as the Pacific ocean, though he had no jurisdiction over the depths of the abyss and the mermaids that have evolved to live there.

Mermaids rarely left the oceans they were born in, and King Triton's subjects were no exception. They had evolved to live in the temperate, somewhat calm waters of the Pacific, and they were more likely to be spotted by humans frolicking in the gentle waves. They were the template for what humans thought all mermaids looked like; humanlike, smooth-skinned and slender as the dolphins they played with under the waves.

Ariel had seen a deep-sea mermaid once; it had come to the surface to die, as it was old and blind and didn't really know where it was. The sight frightened her badly enough to have nightmares for weeks afterwards; the creature was pale as bone, with bulging eyes and a distended jaw that opened and closed without words. Its tail was long and whiplike with several trailing threads attached, and its head held just a few long strands of silver hair.

Some officials were summoned from the castle, and they escorted the creature to a safe place for it to pass on in peace. Ariel had wanted to comfort the poor thing, because she was a kind soul after all, but she was far too frightened to approach it.

"They're just different from us," her oldest sister had told her that night, when she woke up screaming. "Life is hard down there, they had to adapt. That's why they look the way they do."

Triton's court was visited by delegates of two other mermaid nations, and although Ariel was not permitted to attend court at the time she was able to spy from the balcony as the delegates spoke with her father.

She would look back on the delegate from the waters known as the Indian ocean fondly, for she had been the most beautiful mermaid Ariel had ever seen or ever would see. She was just half the size of the average Pacific mermaid, beautifully clothed in diaphanous sea leaves, pearls and polished stones. Her tail was not one strong appendage as theirs were, but a floating set of lace-like fins in shades of green and gold. She did not swim, but gauged the currents and allowed herself to be carried by them. The court had been charmed by her, none more than Ariel herself. She longed to visit the Indian ocean herself, but this idea was laughed off.

"You'd get washed away," they chuckled when she asked. "The currents are too strong to swim against even for full grown mermaids!"

The delegate from the Atlantic ocean was even stranger. She dwarfed Ariel's father, although she looked enormously fat she clearly had a lot of muscle underneath the blubber that protected her from the cold stormy waters she was born in. She swam slowly, almost lazily, but she could swim at astonishing speed when she wanted to. Even in the warm waters of King Tritons' court, she was covered in sealskin cloaks, and she carried a strange weapon studded with the tusks of walruses.

Ariel knew there were mermaids at the polar regions of the world; she knew there were only a few families that had chosen to live there, and there was next to no information about them beyond the old family names. Supposedly the ones in the South were tiny, no bigger than seahorses, and couldn't swim at all but merely floated in the frigid waters. There was nothing known about the northerners, beyond the fact that they existed.

She knew, too, that there were mermaids that lived deep into human territory, in lakes and rivers, even in swamps. At one time, long before she'd ever seen her first human, she had tried to swim into an estuary to see how far she could get. Her rather romantic notion was to get upstream and meet one of these freshwater mermaids, learn about them and their lives. However, she never even got past the first waterfall.

…..

Trying to keep up with conversations was difficult.

It was hard enough when the princesses kept talking about things she didn't understand, referencing objects she hadn't discovered, and talking about places she had never heard of. It was twice as difficult when the princesses talking were Merida or Tiana. Even when she knew they were speaking English, their accents and strange turn-of-phrases rendered the conversation so incomprehensible they might as well have been speaking Creole or Gaelic.

Even the princesses that principally spoke the same language as Ariel had other languages too. Aurora, Snow, Elsa and Anna spoke German, though only Aurora spoke it fluently. Ella and Belle spoke French fluently, Rapunzel spoke both French and Occitan. Jasmine spoke just enough Mandarin to carry out a conversation with Mulan, and likewise Mulan spoke just enough Arabic to do the same.

Pocahontas' Algonquian tongue was far too difficult for even the multilingual princesses to attempt beyond a few phrases, and Merida's Gaelic was similarly confusing. Ariel couldn't even wrap her tongue around words like _Tibik-kìzis_ or _Délámhach._

Sitting in the kitchen with Tiana in the evenings, as they all tended to do at some times, was often an exercise in Ariel being silent, just trying to understand what was being said. If Belle or Ella happened to be there too, their tendency to lapse into French halfway through left Ariel baffled. It was like they forgot she was there.

She shouldn't have been surprised to find that the princesses were very different from each other, just as mermaids were from each other, but she was anyway.

One afternoon, Mulan had volunteered to make lunch for them all, neatly kicking Tiana out of the kitchen for a while. Ariel fretted a little; she had just about cracked the art of using a fork (not a dinglehopper, she reminded herself once again) but she had seen Mulan use those little sticks to eat with and how was she supposed to do that?

But by the time Mulan served up her dish, she discovered she wasn't the only one.

Ella and Aurora, normally so graceful, fumbled indelicately with the sticks. Snow chose to use them with both hands, and although it looked childish it didn't stop Rapunzel or Anna from copying her after trying to get it right and failing. Jasmine already knew how, and Elsa managed to get it right after the first attempt. Tiana swapped them out straight away for a fork, Merida and Pocahontas resorted to stabbing their food and holding their bowls close to their mouths (having already proven they didn't give a monkey's about typical princess manners).

"It's not that difficult," Jasmine shrugged when Ella sighed heavily and readjusted her grip for the tenth time. "Just keep the bottom one still and move the top one."

"I'm trying," Ella said through gritted teeth.

"You can get a fork, I won't take it personally," Mulan offered.

"No, this is a skill worth developing," Aurora said smoothly, though her stickful of food was trickling back into her bowl.

"Itsh good," Merida mumbled through a mouthful of rice. She was almost finished, her stabbing having worked out well for her.

"How are you getting on, Ariel?" Belle suddenly asked, and they all turned towards her.

Truth be told, she had gotten caught up in examining the little gold markings on the black lacquered wood of the sticks and wondering if she would get away with asking for a set to take with her. She hadn't even taken a single bite.

"F-fine," she stuttered, and attempted to take a mouthful but dropped one of the sticks right away.

"It's okay if you can't figure it out," Mulan assured her. "We start learning to use them as children back home. There's also a whole lot of rules to follow."

"What kind of rules?" Belle asked.

"Let's just say we've already broken all of them," Mulan quipped.

"It's a good sight better than having to go through five different forks," Elsa grumbled, and Anna nodded vigorously.

"It's so confusing," Ariel spoke up, agreeing. "I didn't even know what to do with a fork when I first went on land..."

She trailed off uncomfortably, because once again everyone had turned to look at her. Their expressions were amused, but deep down she wondered if they pitied her for her ignorance.

"What do you use to eat underwater?" Belle asked, and at least she could be depended on for genuine curiosity.

"We don't use anything, really..." Ariel mumbled softly.

"You eat with your hands? That's sensible," Pocahontas said.

"No, I mean we don't eat," Ariel corrected. "Not the way humans do."

"What do you mean?" Tiana asked, folding her arms and leaning in.

"Well..." she started, very aware that her face was flushed red. "We filter-feed. We have organs built into our tails for that purpose..."

They were well hidden, those organs. They closed over for swimming, and couldn't be seen under the scales most of the time, but at night as the mermaids slept they fanned out to dredge what they could from the ocean.

"But you have a mouth," Belle said. She had that little glint in her eye that said her interest had been peaked. "And I assume a working esophagus...how are you eating now?"

"My father made me fully human," Ariel answered. "I never used my mouth for eating, or that other thing... we don't really need them underwater, they're just there."

"Oh, so they're vestigial," Belle exclaimed. Her bowl was still half-full, but when she got like this it was like she no longer felt hunger or tiredness.

"I don't know what that means."

"It's...um.."

Belle trailed off, and then fired off some rapid French to Ella. Ella paused for a moment with her chopsticks by her mouth, before giving her the word she was looking for.

"It's a holdover," Belle continued. "From when your ancestors lived on land. Are all mermaids filter-feeders?"

"I don't know," Ariel told her. "My father's subjects certainly were...and we had a visitor from another ocean once, she definitely was."

She paused herself, thinking. She was somewhat sure, though, that the visitor from the Atlantic had been a particularly voracious carnivore that ate with her mouth like the other mammals that populated her ocean. She had a lot of weight to keep up in such cold waters, filter-feeding would have never kept her going.

It really only hit her then just how alien she was to the rest of them. For all their language differences, and the different ways they ate their food, they were ultimately human. Ariel was something else entirely, no longer a mermaid but not fully human either.

…..

Belle invited her to have tea with her in the library later, and although Ariel was still feeling a little on edge since lunch she agreed. Belle was always kind, even if her enthusiasm over Ariel's differences could be overwhelming. When Ariel arrived and knocked, Belle didn't even look up from her book until she cleared her throat.

"Oh!" Belle exclaimed. "Sorry, I was distracted...and I never even made any tea..."

"That's okay," Ariel said, sitting in the window seat across from her. "To tell you the truth, I don't really like tea."

"You've been drinking it for months," Belle deadpanned.

"I was just being polite."

The two of them collapsed into a giggling fit.

"What are you reading, anyway?" Ariel asked as her giggles subsided.

"Oh, well what we discussed at lunch got me thinking, so I went back to my book," Belle answered, oblivious to the way Ariel tensed.

 _I know I'm different. You don't need to prove it any further._

"You know every culture has its own version of mermaids?" Belle continued. "I mean, you're the first any of us have met in person, but they're everywhere you find water. And they're all different from each other."

"Really? In what way?"

Despite herself, Ariel was interested in Belle's findings.

"According to Merida, there are horselike creatures that live in freshwater that tempt humans to ride them, and then they drown them, possibly for food. She also said something about seals that changed into women and lived with humans on the seashore. I can't tell how much of that is just superstition, her people have a lot of stories like that."

It was true, if what Merida told them was correct then the lands she came from were incredibly dangerous. If mermaids had adapted to appear horselike it was probably because the humans there knew better than to approach a strange woman in the water.

"Aurora said something about a woman with a snake's tail who lives in fountains looking for a man who will promise never to visit her on a Saturday," Belle continued. "Snow remembered that same story, which means it's pretty far reaching, their kingdoms are nowhere near each other."

"Why a snake's tail?" Ariel asked.

"Who knows? It might just be a translation problem."

"I did see a mermaid with a snakelike tail once," Ariel said, suddenly remembering. "But she was from the deepest part of the ocean... she needed a tail like that to swim down there."

"Hm...you think her subspecies might have made it to Aurora's kingdom?"

"I doubt it," Ariel laughed. "Even if they did, I don't think they would have found any man willing to visit on any day. They don't look like humans."

"Don't underestimate unmarried men," Belle quipped. "Elsa was able to tell me something about _rusalka..._ they're not quite mermaids but supposedly they live near water. According to her they are the spirits of girls who died violent deaths, and they try to lure men and children into the water to drown them."

"I hope you know I've never known a single mermaid that deliberately tried to drown anyone," Ariel huffed.

"I know," Belle laughed. "But it's human nature to assume something they don't understand is dangerous."

"Who knows, maybe they are," Ariel sighed. "I've never met an inland mermaid. I wouldn't even know what to say if I did."

"There's a first time for everything," Belle said. "You are the first mermaid we've met, you could be the first ocean mermaid an inland mermaid has ever met...didn't you say you could go on diplomatic visits?"

"Yes, I did."

"Well, there's a very large river near our palace back home. If there are any mermaids in my country, they'd probably be there. Why not try and find some?"

Why not indeed?

The first time she'd tried to find other mermaids, she had been foiled by the lack of strength in her tail and her gills being unsuited to freshwater breathing. This time, she could try on her own two human feet and hold her breath as the humans did. Perhaps it would work.


	7. Chapter 7

**Kindred**

 **Chapter Seven**

… **..**

The real stumbling block for Rapunzel wasn't the awkwardness of meeting the parents she didn't know (they accepted her wholeheartedly) or adjusting to life as a princess (everyone from the highest ranking courtier to the poorest peasant treated her with kindness) but the sudden realization that she had no idea how to be around _people._

Gothel, smothering as she had been, had often been gone for long stretches of time, and Eugene's own people skills were nothing to write home about, having been raised in an orphanage and pushed into a life of crime from early on. Those were the two people she had the closest relationship with; therefore, what was normal?

She could use a knife and fork, but didn't understand why there were so many different pieces of cutlery for just one meal. Court etiquette confused her no matter how many times the rules and taboos were explained to her. Her simple kirtle and gown had been tossed out and now her clothes had so many different pieces that it required three servants to help her dress every morning and undress every night.

She knew Eugene felt the same. Even though he had nominally been accepted as her husband-to-be, he always thought the courtiers looked down their noses at him (and he was right, many of them did privately sneer at him). But he had more freedom to come and go as he pleased, and although he always left with a promise to return, Rapunzel lived in fear that he would someday go and not come back.

The girls her age at court were so different. She had a retinue of six ladies-in-waiting, and although they could be very sweet they had been raised with a different set of standards than she had. The dynamic was so strange that the oldest and most socially aware girl, a countess' daughter named Magdalena, issued instructions and the others, including Rapunzel herself, followed her lead as best they could. On the surface, Magda was nice, but there was a hidden bite to her that made Rapunzel believe that the ladies were sniggering at her behind her back.

"Don't you look lovely today, highness," she would gush from behind her painted fan. "Purple is such an earthy colour, so fresh. It truly becomes you."

Rapunzel would thank her for the compliment but noted that the other girls exchanged smirks behind their own fans. It was some sort of insult, but Rapunzel wasn't intelligent enough to grasp it.

Some days she didn't want to leave her room at all. A little part of her yearned for her old tower, where everything was familiar and there was nobody around to see her fail at being part of the world.

…..

"Punz!" Anna gasped, clearly having run up the stairs at break-neck speed. She was holding her side and her face was a furious red.

"What's wrong?" Rapunzel asked, dropping her paintbrush.

"Nothing's wrong," Anna assured her, flopping into a nearby chair. "I just...needed to...tell you...about the thing!"

"Drink some water," Rapunzel ordered, pouring her a glass from the pitcher she kept in the gallery.

When Anna looked less like she was going to expire from exhaustion, Rapunzel asked what 'the thing' was.

"Okay, so you know how Pocahontas and Merida are always wandering around the woods, right?" she began. "And we've all been wondering what the hell they get up to in there..."

"I don't think we've all been wondering that..." Rapunzel said uneasily.

"Okay, maybe just me," Anna shrugged. "Point is, I think I figured it out. I think the woods are _haunted."_

Rapunzel blinked. Had she heard that right?

"What?" she asked.

Anna rolled her eyes and flopped further into her chair.

"Come on, don't give me that skeptical look! I got that from Elsa already today...look, the forest is really, really old, right?"

"Right..."

"So it stands to reason that _something_ must have died in there at some point, right?"

"I suppose so..."

"And Pocahontas talks to spirits back home so she probably does it here too, and I know Merida's got some messed-up deal with ghosts screaming in the middle of the night or something, and both of them are always in there, so they must be looking for ghosts!"

It still didn't make much sense, but Anna had a way of making even ridiculous things sound plausible through sheer enthusiasm. Rapunzel had gravitated towards Anna for that very reason; Anna was clumsy and gauche but didn't care a jot for what anyone thought of her, and her whimsical nature made her so much fun to be around.

"So, are you up for an adventure?" Anna asked with a wicked smile.

"Of course," Rapunzel shrugged. "Why not?"

…..

Three hours later, Rapunzel found herself holding a large tree branch preparing to strike...something, while Anna painstakingly pulled the underbrush out of their way. Something suddenly dashed out in front of their feet, both girls screamed, Rapunzel brought her branch down but just managed to knock Anna off her feet.

"Oh," she said sheepishly, extending a hand to Anna. "It's just a rabbit."

If it were possible for a rabbit to look peeved, this one looked very peeved to have been disturbed. With an injured sniff in their general direction, it scurried behind a tree and out of sight.

"That makes four rabbits," Anna groaned. "Two deer and one mouse, and that bird thing..."

"A heron," Rapunzel said helpfully.

"Right, a heron. No ghosts."

They may not have found any ghosts, and neither had seen Merida or Pocahontas despite trying to follow their trail, but they were in high spirits nonetheless. It was a pleasant day to be rambling in the underbrush, and although they were covered in little scratches and bruises it was exciting to be out together.

"Do you have forests like this in Arendelle?" Rapunzel asked curiously.

Of the two of them, Anna seemed more used to the wilderness.

"No, it's all pine trees and snow," Anna muttered. "And the one time I actually got to go up the mountain I didn't get near the forest. Probably for the best though, it's full of wolves."

"Are there wolves in this forest?"

"I dunno...maybe?"

They stopped, stood still, listened for that telltale howl. When it didn't happen within the space of a minute, they concluded that this forest was wolf-free.

"What were the woods like by your tower?" Anna asked, jumping lightly over a small stream and helping Rapunzel do the same.

"They were a lot more open," she answered, tossing her braid back over her shoulder. "From what I could see anyway. I didn't really get to explore, I was stuck in the tower for most of my life and then boom! Straight to the city."

It was remarkable, really, how much they had in common. Anna had never been officially locked away, and her parents' intentions had been good, but Anna was just as isolated and out of touch with normal girls her age as Rapunzel was.

At least, until they both went on retreat and discovered that there were a great many ways to be a girl their age.

"Ssh!" Anna said suddenly, crouching behind a tree. "I think I see something!"

Peering through the thicket, Anna could see something too. It was a pale yellow thing, too unnatural a colour to be an animal, and it was billowy and floating. A strange sound followed in its wake, a sort of high-pitched whine.

"Is it a..." Rapunzel began, but she couldn't bring herself to finish.

They weren't supposed to actually _find_ a ghost. That was supposed to be an excuse to ditch the castle chores for the day to run around in the forest! What now?

"Oh God," Anna gasped. "It's coming this way."

"What do we do?" Rapunzel hissed.

"I don't know!" Anna hissed back.

When the thing was almost upon them, they sort of simultaneously lashed out in panic and also came to a silent agreement to strike together. They rose from the thicket, screaming at the top of their lungs, brandishing tree branches in an effort to protect themselves.

Snow White screamed straight back at them, tripped over a root and fell into a dead faint.

…..

"I don't understand," she had protested, before her first retreat. "I've only just come back to you...don't you want me to stay?"

"Of _course_ we do, darling," the queen sighed. "But you must understand, you have royal blood and you are the only child we will ever have. The future of our nation depends on you."

"I won't fit in there," Rapunzel mumbled, clutching her too-heavy skirt with both hands. "I can barely manage with the ladies-in-waiting here. How am I supposed to fit in with real princesses?"

"You're a real princess," the king reminded her, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. "Different countries have different customs, those other girls will be just as unsure as you are."

Unsure? Unsure wasn't a good word to describe any of them, when she finally arrived at the retreat. She was in awe of Ella and Aurora, they were so graceful and gracious it didn't seem human. Belle's intelligence was frightening and Tiana's firm manner was intimidating. Elsa and Pocahontas spoke so rarely it was hard to tell they were there at all, but they always sat just off to the side, watching over everything with amusement.

Jasmine laced every conversation with sultry charm, and polite and friendly as Mulan was her stories made her sound like she had saved her nation single-handedly. Ariel's curiosity was as fascinating as her tales from the deepest reaches of the ocean, and Snow was so sweet it was hard to believe anybody could have wanted her dead. Merida was so different from all of them, and so uncaring of how different she was, that she might have been from another planet entirely.

Different from Rapunzel and different from each other. Was it any wonder then that she and Anna gravitated towards each other, recognizing a kindred spirit? Anna was earnest, loved to laugh and was always up for mischief. She might as well have been Rapunzel's twin.

…..

"...so anyway, we're very sorry."

Anna finished her long apology, just about remembering to actually say sorry instead of just explaining how they had been the cause of Snow's twisted ankle.

"Yeah, we're really sorry, Snow," Rapunzel said, with as much earnestness as she could manage.

"That's okay," Snow said with her characteristic sweetness. "It could happen to anyone."

"Not anyone I know," Merida snorted, shifting Snow's weight across her shoulders.

Really, they had been lucky that Merida heard all the screaming and came down from...wherever she was to investigate. Before she arrived on the scene Rapunzel and Anna had been contemplating making some sort of stretcher out of vines and sticks to carry Snow back to the castle. They explained what happened, and after Merida had finished laughing at them (a bit cruelly, to be honest) she just slung Snow White over her back like a sack of flour and carried her away, with the two ghost-hunters following morosely behind.

"Why did you think these woods are haunted, anyway?" Merida asked.

Rapunzel didn't really have an answer, so she looked to Anna.

"Well, you and Pocahontas are always in here," she began. "And you're always telling those stories about the things that wander around in the woods. We got curious."

"And what were you going to do if you actually found one?"

They didn't have an answer, so they just looked down at the ground with their cheeks burning. A muffled snort told them Merida was laughing at them again.

"Oh, you found them."

They looked up towards the source of the smooth voice, and sure enough Pocahontas was sitting on the tip of an outcropping, weaving some sort of rope with long blades of grass.

"They were hard to miss," Merida drawled back, and Pocahontas laughed.

Tiana took one look at them as they emerged from the forest and went straight into the kitchen for the medicine chest, muttering under her breath. Cinderella was out a moment later, holding a cold wet rag.

"It's awfully swollen," she said as Snow was laid out on one of Jasmine's hooked rugs.

"It doesn't hurt that much," Snow said, though she was pale and trembling.

"I assume you had something to do with this?" Elsa sighed in her sister's direction, conjuring a handful of ice shards to wrap around Snow's ankle.

"Well, yeah," Anna mumbled.

"Actually, it was both of us," Rapunzel volunteered.

Elsa raised a dubious eyebrow, but Ella laughed.

"It never gets boring having the two of you around, does it?" she said.

Rapunzel knew boredom. It was a constant companion in the tower with its three books, four windows, one fireplace and one stove. It was an insidious creeping sensation whenever she had to attend court or listen to her ladies-in-waiting gossip about people she didn't know.

It occurred to her then that even though she had been on the retreat for nearly three months, she had never been bored.


	8. Chapter 8

**Kindred**

 **Chapter Eight**

 **Mulan**

…..

Mulan's favourite thing about staying in the castle was that there was no official time to get up in the morning.

There was an unspoken assumption that everyone should be present and accounted for before ten o clock, but only the natural early risers stuck to that rule (Tiana, Pocahontas, Belle, Aurora and Rapunzel). The others fitted loosely into 'sometimes rise early but never on weekends' (Elsa, Cinderella, Ariel, Snow White) and 'would sleep through the castle burning down if allowed' (Merida, Jasmine and Anna, as well as Mulan herself.) Breakfast was always left on the stove, even if it was eaten closer to noon, and there was no judgment if anyone missed it entirely.

Castle life lacked any kind of urgency, and that in itself was a novelty. Chores were done at whatever pace the princess doing them felt like, and if things didn't get done it wasn't the end of the world. Even so, they could hardly be called idle. Belle had her books, Anna and Rapunzel their hijinks, Tiana her many bubbling pots and Merida and Pocahontas the call of the wilderness.

True, Jasmine often _looked_ idle, but she was only behaving in the manner she was accustomed to.

"Tiana is looking a bit flushed," she said one morning while pouring tea for herself and Mulan. "She'll be coming down with something in...oh, I'd say, a week. Maybe three days."

Indeed, she was right. She always spotted these things before they happened, because her hobby was watching the other girls. It never ceased to amaze Mulan what she could tell from just looking at someone.

"You'd be so useful back home," she groaned. "I can't even begin to guess what the concubines are thinking most of the time."

"Well, your imperial harem is rather different from ours, isn't it?" Jasmine retorted with an elegant shrug.

…..

"I don't understand," Mulan had said, when the emperor finished his proposal. "With greatest respect, I am not a member of the royal household..."

"The royal household is of my choosing," the emperor told her, quietly but firmly. "I can claim you as an adopted daughter if I so choose."

It terrified her to even think of it. She had barely managed to hold onto her dignity after the matchmaker incident, and that was only one afternoon. Six months, surrounded by the highest nobility of several different nations? She would rather fight a hundred more Huns in the snow. Single-handed.

 _I will say the wrong thing and start a war. He can't send me._

She looked to Li for backup, but his gaze was firmly directed at the floor. He would not speak against the emperor. Nobody would.

"Forgive me, great father," she began, lowering herself to the floor once again. "The missive states that they want a royal maiden who represents the grace and grandeur of her country. I am not suited to such a honour, my speech is inelegant and I have no grace to speak of. Perhaps Consort Pearl or Consort Dove would be better suited..."

She was cut off by some oddly bitter laughter from the emperor. All around them, the eunuches of the court muttered and whispered.

"Tell me truthfully, Fa Mulan," he said. "If you wanted to build bridges with the women of another nation, would _you_ send Consort Pearl or Consort Dove?"

She thought about it for a moment, but a moment was all that was needed. There could only be one answer.

"No," she whispered.

…..

When she eventually got up and made her way down to the kitchen, it was suffused with a most pungent smell coming from a large pot Aurora was diligently stirring on the stove.

"What's that?" Mulan asked, rescuing her rice porridge from the back burner of the stove.

"It's a tisane," Aurora told her, wiping sweat from her brow. "Tiana's cough has gotten worse overnight."

"How are you going to get her to drink that?" Mulan asked.

"Oh, it smells dreadful now, but I'm waiting on some pennycress and blackberries," Aurora explained. "It won't be nearly as bad once it's finished."

Cinderella bustled in a moment later with a basket full of linen. A scarf was tied around her mouth and as she pulled it down, her delicate nose wrinkled with distaste.

"Shouldn't Snow be back by now?" she asked, dumping the basket by the door.

"Probably," Aurora shrugged. "I sent Merida after her."

"Oh good."

"How's our patient?" Aurora asked.

"Crabby," Ella gently laughed. "I think if we could move her bed to the kitchen so she could keep cooking she'd be much happier."

Mulan laughed along with Aurora, but she still felt a little internal squirm. Some people were territorial over their cooking pots for good reason...

"The break will do her good," Aurora said. "All this steam probably gave her the cough in the first place."

"Belle is up there reading to her," Ella told her.

"Then I'd better finish this soon," Aurora sighed. "I daresay Belle has forgotten she's there...what is she reading?"

" _Les Liaisons Dangeureuses._ "

"Scandalous!"

The back door swung open and Merida escorted a red-faced Snow White inside. She stopped long enough to chug back a glass of water, shoved an apple in her mouth and was gone again. Snow called a very bashful apology after her.

"Did you get the blackberries?" Aurora asked, gently taking the basket from her.

"Oh yes," Snow replied, sinking into a chair beside Ella. "Most of the ground level ones were gone already, so I had to climb awfully high to get the best...and..."

"You got stuck?"

Sheepishly, she nodded. The girls in the kitchen had the good grace not to laugh openly at her, beyond a fond giggle.

…..

Consort Dove was possibly the most beautiful of the emperor's concubines, and at all times exquisitely dressed in many layers of diaphanous silk. Her hair was always intricately knotted and braided, festooned with shining hairpins studded with jade and amber. She was a splendid figure, lovely as a rare butterfly.

And yet, when introduced to Mulan for the first time, it was not awe of her beauty that Mulan felt, but a creeping unease.

Perhaps it was because that gracious smile was just a little too wide to be genuine, and her beautifully spoken words of praise did not ring true. There was laughter in her eyes, she shot sideways looks to her ladies as she spoke, and they hid their giggles behind their painted fans. All of this was designed to intimidate a fellow concubine, but Mulan was no concubine.

They were forced to spend time together by the obligations they shared towards the emperor, but Mulan treated Consort Dove as she would a poisonous snake. She kept her distance, as much as she could, and observed her for signs that she would strike out.

And indeed, Consort Dove did strike out, many times, at other concubines. She paid eunuchs to spread rumours about them that often reached the emperor's ears, and she had spies in many of the palaces that warned her of what the newer concubines were wearing, or eating, or who they were seeing. It was noted that a particularly beautiful new girl had suffered a terrible rash on her face not long after being gifted some scented lotion by Consort Dove, but she was never even questioned about it.

All because she had the emperor's one and only living child. A girl child, Liu, but a living child nonetheless. The emperor's adult son had died three years before Mulan's birth, taking too much opium and hitting his head in the bath, and his other three sons had died in infancy. The emperor would never hear a bad word spoken against her, as long as her child was living.

They had high hopes when the emperor's other favourite, Consort Pearl, became pregnant. Notably, Consort Pearl went into isolation in her palace when the happy news was announced, would not entertain visitors nor accept gifts.

With her most gracious and beautiful smile, Consort Dove gave her best wishes.

…..

Pocahontas sauntered into the kitchen shortly before lunch, carrying a bundle of greens wrapped in cloth. She handed it to Aurora and stretched languidly in front of the fire.

"Will that be enough?" she asked.

"That's plenty, thank you," Aurora replied, washing and tearing them to add to the tisane. "Were they hard to find?"

"Not too hard," Pocahontas assured her. "It's still quite warm in the east, the cliff-side had plenty."

Once again, Snow White blushed and stared down into her tea. Steam billowed from the tisane pot but it no longer smelled so rank, instead filling the kitchen with a sweet floral aroma.

"Is it almost finished?" Ella asked. "I want to get started on lunch."

"Not long now," Aurora assured her. "Just a few more minutes to steep."

Mulan volunteered to bring the tisane to her, because she'd woken up late and was still full from breakfast. She met Elsa on the way up the stairs, who handed her a cold compress freshly refilled with ice.

"Don't take anything she says too personally," Elsa muttered. "She's _really_ grouchy...and see if you can kick Belle out. She's been there for hours."

"Will do," Mulan agreed.

When she cracked open the door, Belle seemed oblivious to the murderous look on Tiana's face, so absorbed in the story she was reading that as always she forgot where she was and what she was supposed to be doing.

" _When one woman strikes at the heart of another, she seldom misses, and the wound is invariably fatal,"_ she quoted, missing Mulan clearing her throat.

"Belle!" Mulan called loudly. "They need you in the kitchen."

"Oh," she replied with a slow blink. "Oh well, I can come back after..."

"Don't worry about it," Tiana groaned with a harsh croak from her sickbed.

Belle shrugged, and left the room with her book.

"Thank you," Tiana hissed and sniffed. "I was _this close_ to throwing something at her..."

"That's okay," Mulan said. "Aurora made this for you. How are you feeling?"

"Annoyed," she replied. "I hate being stuck in bed."

Mulan poured a cup of the tisane and handed it to Tiana. She tried hard to stamp down on that uneasy feeling she got, watching Tiana drink it down.

…..

It was Consort Pearl's mistake to have taken visitors in her palace so soon, but being near the end of her pregnancy with no complications had made her foolhardy. There was also that little spiteful urge to rub her good fortune in her rival's face; the physician was sure that the child would be a boy, and Consort Dove still had only a girl to her name.

Mulan was not there to see, but she could piece together what had happened from what she heard. Consort Dove had brought gifts, as had many of the other concubines. Someone had brought a special blend of tea supposed to help with labour pains, and as Consort Dove was the only concubine present who had brought a pregnancy to term one had to imagine this gift came from her.

Mulan could picture the beautiful, gracious smile Consort Dove gave, watching Consort Pearl drink the tea. She could picture the shocked expression she feigned when news was brought of Consort Pearl's sudden illness, and the death of her child so soon before it could be born. She could even guess what the condolence letter would read, eloquent and insincere.

Within a week, Princess Liu received new silks to make a gown from and shortly after contracted smallpox. When she died, the last of the Emperor's blood died with her.

…..

"Urgh," Tiana muttered, sticking out her tongue. "Strange aftertaste."

"Aurora used a full basket of blackberries to cover it up," Mulan told her.

"We were out of blackberries last time I checked."

"She sent Snow out to collect more."

"Bet that went well."

They allowed themselves a slightly mean chuckle, since Snow wasn't around to have her feelings hurt by it.

"So what's in this besides blackberries?" Tiana asked. "I think I tasted cinnamon..."

"I have no idea," Mulan shrugged. "Pennycress, molasses, some other things. I didn't see her make all of it."

"Oh well," Tiana shrugged, pouring herself another cup. "It's not poison. Probably."

Mulan laughed at the joke, though truthfully she didn't find it funny at all.


	9. Chapter 9

**Kindred**

 **Chapter Nine**

Note: Regular readers of my work will know that my health is in a constant state of tanking and recuperating, and right now it's tanking again. So that means extended bed rest, which means more writing time. Every cloud, silver lining etc.

Since I'm already playing fast and loose with history because the source does likewise, it's likely I will make some mistakes when it comes to Algonquin (specifically I'm drawing from Ojibwe, as that's the one I'm most familiar with) culture. I've done my research to the best of my ability but if there's a chance I've misrepresented something, I apologize sincerely.

…..

 **Pocahontas**

She felt a little pang of guilt for using the name 'Pocahontas' when on retreat with the others. They were so unabashedly open with each other, and she did her best to fit in, but sometimes it seemed like she came from a world so different to the other girls that she would always be set apart, and perhaps it was because she had not told them her true name.

Names were powerful, and even beyond the nickname given to the coltish child too fond of turning cartwheels in the dirt she had different names from different mouths. They had their own inflection, and some names were only to be spoken by one person. 'Pocahontas' was the throwaway, tossed in the direction of the pale-faced strangers and accepted without question.

The first few weeks had been hard. She struggled to adapt to her new home, and it made interacting with the other girls awkward. Tiana humored her mumbling over the stove (the closest thing the castle had to a sacred fire) but she had caught Pocahontas visibly wincing as she added chopped sage to a cooking pot, and even though Tiana's questions were in good humor Pocahontas couldn't quite explain herself properly.

She refused Cinderella's offer of mending her clothes and did her own laundry down by the river, unable to trust their soap and scrubbing with her traditional buckskin. When one of the _wampum_ around her wrist snapped, she panicked and barked at Snow to stay back when she tried to help her gather the beads. Snow, thinking she had done something terribly wrong, burst into tears and fled at the sight of Pocahontas for nearly a week before Aurora put things right between them.

It was odd that Ariel, who was barely even the same species as the other girls, had managed to fit in so perfectly when Pocahontas was scraping along the sidelines. After a time it did become easier, but it was never comfortable. The walls of the castle seemed to close in on her, and she felt like it was trying to trap her. The living stones and the vines wrapped around the turrets whispered at night, keeping her awake.

Strange to think she had been the one to insist on leaving her home in the first place.

…..

"It is not needed," Powhatan had told her, when she brought the subject up with him. "You are needed here."

She bristled, but kept her anger to herself. She was only needed because, since the death of Kocoum, other potential husbands had been offering gifts for her hand and there was tension in the tribes because of it. Choosing one man over another could cause serious ruptures and even lead to war, and Powhatan wanted her close at hand so she couldn't make rash decisions on her own.

There were far bigger things at stake than her hand.

"This opportunity will only come to us once," she warned. "It would be best for all of us if I go."

"You speak as if you were chief," Powhatan chuckled fondly. "I decide what is best..."

"The visitor will be leaving for her own lands soon and she will not come back," Pocahontas hissed. "But the others will."

The tribes had kept their distance from the settlers as a rule, but the arrival of the 'walking flower' had piqued their curiosity. Pocahontas was already one of the few natives that attempted to communicate with the settlers, and so she had gathered her courage and journeyed to the little township.

The 'walking flower' was ghostly white, even for a pale-faced stranger. The clothes she wore were enormous, covered in a strange frothy stuff that looked like sea foam on an upturned flower, and she carried another upturned flower to shield herself from the sun. Her hair was corn-yellow, hanging in fat little spirals like a sprouting fern. The other settler women were bare-faced, ruddy of cheek and heavyset, she was so markedly different from them she hardly looked real.

She had come from a distant land, she told Pocahontas (drinking some strange pungent liquid from miniature pots in a ramshackle log building) and she had come to find a girl among the natives who could be considered their 'princess.' It was to build strong alliances and friendships between nations, and many nations had already sent their own girls and successfully forged alliances.

"It would be good for your people," the visitor said, flipping one of those perfect coils over her shoulder. "Good for you, too."

But her father had refused to listen, demurring every time she brought it up, right up until the day before the 'walking flower' was due to board a ship back to her homeland.

"I can go once," she offered, as a compromise. "I will not be too old to marry when I return. And if it is beneficial..."

"What man would want to marry you then?" Powhatan scoffed. "You will return wearing these upturned flowers with white powder all over your face..."

"Don't be ridiculous," she snapped. "I go in place of my people. I will show them what we are."

"No. We will stay away from them, as we have done all this time."

"The strangers will not stop coming, Father," she said, though she was no longer trying to convince him. She would go, with or without his blessing. "When the maple trees stand against the winds of the east, they are torn up from the roots. We must bend with the wind, or likewise be torn up from our roots."

…..

She had made that long journey fully prepared to talk seriously with the leaders of other nations, of resources and war and alliances and land. She wasn't prepared to merely make small talk with these girls, who only talked of war and resources in passing. Their strange customs alarmed her, and in response she shrank back to what she knew.

In the end, she spent most of her time in the forest. She came back for meals and did her share of the chores (although they never asked her to do much, knowing she preferred being outside) and as much as she liked the other girls (and she did, she truly did) they just felt too different. Even back home she had mostly been alone; Nakoma had been just as much a minder sent by her father as she was a friend.

The forest was very different; old and dense, and the trees grew into each other in a way she had never seen before. It was full of life, deer and wolves and bears as well as creatures she had never seen before; odd colourful birds that nested in the mountains' natural shelves, long snakelike dogs that lived in the river, fish with long sharp teeth and an evil glint in their eye. It was fascinating.

Every year a new girl or girls would enter the retreat, and after a second term Pocahontas finally found a sort of kindred spirit.

Merida seemed just as out-of-place as Pocahontas herself, although she seemed to care about it less than Pocahontas did. She got on well with the other girls and they were fond of her in turn, but the castle seemed to close in on her as much as it did on Pocahontas, and she too fled for the wilderness.

Their camaraderie was strange, nearly completely wordless. It started with them coming across each other randomly; Pocahontas would be taking a small raft she built herself down the river and drop in on Merida catching fish near the waterfall. Merida would be trying to scale the cliff-side to look in on the nesting birds and find Pocahontas sitting in a nearby tree. Occasionally their paths crossed while they were trying to lose a bear or a pack of wolves and they ended up running in the same direction.

A nod, a shrug, and the other would be gone.

Then after a time the dismissive nod turned into a nod in the direction of the campfire, with the fish grilling over the flames, and the answering nod was one of acceptance. The shrug was a question and an answer.

 _What are you doing?_

 _Nothing. Want to do nothing with me?_

 _Okay._

Before they had come back for lunch and dinner; and then they spent hours out of the castle, in each others company or not, listening to the noise of the forest. The wolves howling to each other, the rush of the river after rainstorms, the rustling in the undergrowth of those strange little animals that only came out at night, the crackle of the campfire.

Pocahontas' wandering was aimless, migratory. She followed a scent on the breeze or the flow of the mountain streams, or tracked a particularly interesting bird but never really minded if she lost it. Merida's wandering seemed to have some sort of purpose; she deliberately took herself off to the most inhospitable places in the forest, the sheer cliff-sides and the rapids where the water was most dangerous, the sunken marshes and the most thorn-riddled thickets. That was why Pocahontas usually returned to the castle tired but tidy, and Merida returned covered in mud with her dress torn to bits.

They never arranged to meet, but it happened naturally. Pocahontas could always track Merida to wherever she was, and Merida made no attempt to cover her tracks. Often as the sun was going down they would end up together on opposite sides of a campfire, or sitting in a tree together watching the sunset while braiding vines into rope and carving arrows.

When they did speak, they felt comfortable enough to slip into their own native languages, until they each had a rudimentary understanding of the others speech.

 _Aaniin bineshii?*_

 _Nil a fhios agam. Gainead, dealraimh.*_

 _Aa. Nimbakade. *_

 _Agus mise. Rachaidh me abhaile. *_

From time to time, Snow White would make her often disastrous journeys into the forest and find herself in some sort of trouble. It became almost a competition between them who could come to her rescue first. On even rarer occasions, one of the other girls (Anna, or Rapunzel or sometimes both) would get the urge to explore and quickly find themselves in over their heads. The two of them watched from a distance, making guesses as to what the other princess was trying to do and offering a helping hand if needed (but usually having a laugh at their expense either way.)

Eventually they were comfortable enough in each others company to relay stories over the fire. Merida's people held their storytellers in high regard, as did Pocahontas' people. They had both told stories to Belle, but had held back some of the more frightening or graphic details.

Pocahontas had a subversive love for hearing about the creatures that stole children from their cradles and replaced them with their own supernatural offspring, leaving hapless mortals to raise a child that was a pure destructive malevolent force. The creatures were so feared that nobody would call a baby beautiful in case the creatures heard and took them away. She had an equal fondness for hearing about the _amadan,_ who escaped from the lands of the undying in the summer and turned every mortal he touched insane, and the _dullahan,_ a headless spirit that galloped through the night on a headless horse, only stopping to cause death.

Likewise, Merida loved hearing about the _mishipeshu,_ a catlike beast that lived in deep water that tried to drown mortals that strayed too close to the dark places in the lakes and rivers, and the _wiindigoo,_ the emaciated giant that stalked the forests in winter endlessly craving human flesh. She sat through all of Pocahontas' explanations of her people's rituals, even the ones Pocahontas had kept to herself for fear of the other princesses' reactions. She was never put off or disgusted, just deeply fascinated.

Whenever Pocahontas returned home, only Nakoma wanted to know the things she had seen and learned. Her father would not listen, and the other members of her tribe were too concerned with harvest and hunting, preparing for winter and keeping the pale-faced settlers from their borders.

Eventually, they would thank her. For however hard Pocahontas had found it trying to adapt to her new life with new people, her people would find it much, much more difficult.

…..

*Ojibwe: _What was that bird?_

*Gaelic: _I have no idea. A gannet, probably._

*Ojibwe: _Ah. I'm hungry._

*Gaelic: _Me too. I'm going home._


End file.
